


his waxen wings did mount above his reach

by FaustianAspirant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e20 The Man Who Would Be King, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaustianAspirant/pseuds/FaustianAspirant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel struggles to balance his quest for autonomy with his fractured loyalties. Balthazar deceives and is, in turn, deceived. Dean refuses to understand it all, though no-one will give him the chance to listen anyway. And Crowley just wishes people would stop slamming him into walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	his waxen wings did mount above his reach

1

The lab is cold when he enters. The rafters shudder with every blast of the storm, leaving Castiel wondering how anything so desperately fragile could be _secret_. 

It provides nice counterpoint to the screaming, though. 

Crowley is regaling the latest object of his interrogation – a sullen, hollow-eyed vampire bound to a chair by a cluster of nails - with a seemingly limitless stream of curses, cajoling and innuendo. The responses have flown straight past coherent and into the choked realms of incomprehensibility. Castiel sometimes horrifies himself with the fact that he has learned to tell the difference between useful, productive torture, and instances in which Crowley is simply revelling in the flow of his own words. Judging by the conversational imbalance, this is the latter. 

Castiel hoists himself onto his usual seat on the desk, elbowing a couple of scalpels out of the way. “I wish,” he says, shifting his gaze pointedly to the side, “you would be more efficient with this.” And then back to Crowley, expectantly, as the vampire takes advantage of the reprieve to wheeze in a shallow, shuddering breath. 

Crowley looks vaguely affronted. “Gah. Straight for the jugular, with nary a ‘hi honey, I’m home’. Castiel, pet, you are an incorrigible nag.” Still, he raises his knife, swings it back, and promptly decapitates his victim, sending another wave of gore to saturate his apron. “I take it you wanted to talk?”

Fresh flecks of blood spatter Castiel’s front. Neither shows any acknowledgement. 

“This is taking too long,” says Castiel, after a significant pause. “We don’t have time for you to play. Or to pontificate. I’m losing the battle. I’ve lost the battle now if we don't move.” 

After whipping a square of cloth out of his apron pocket, Crowley grimaces as he begins to clean the blood from between his fingers. “Awfully snide coming from the one who gave the entire heavenly host the middle finger back when the Apocalypse swung round. “ He tosses the rag to the table. “Word of advice, Cas: try not to alienate your allies. And yeah, that includes putting a pause on the pissy dour looks.” He unstrings the apron, balls it up briskly, and strides across to the edge of the room to throw it into the sink. As he does so, he adds over his shoulder: “When your mission objective is to slip into God’s empty throne, you’ve got to use all the support you can glean. Else – ever heard the phrase _first as tragedy, then as farce_?” 

Castiel blinks; ruffles his forehead. The implications are troubling at best. “I will not become Lucifer’s microcosm,” he says, deliberately. “This isn’t usurpation. It’s a war of independence.” 

The wind slams at the window with redoubled force. Crowley paces back, stopping a few feet before him. “And to think – earlier, you were prepared to go any distance. Don’t weaken now, Castiel.” 

“I am not weakening,” he snaps, unmoving. “I’m learning to be free. It takes _effort_ , relying on nothing but your own judgement. There’s no-one left to consult.” He does not voice this as a complaint. More as a matter of pride. He is strong-willed; he is learning. He will not let a demon – any demon, not even hell’s premier – demean his efforts. 

“That’s rather the point of agency, sweeting,” drawls Crowley, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Ditching all the useless authority.”

Castiel shrugs away from him, eyeing the floor with a certain amount of accusation. “Yes. Dean and Sam taught me something similar,” he mutters, rebelliously, flicking his eyes across to his co-conspirator. 

“That,” says Crowley, drily, “is its own problem.” 

They lapse into a fraught sort of silence. Crowley eyes the headless trunk in the chair with an air of partial resentment. Castiel simply stares at the wall. The storm has not stopped. Nor has the roof finished shaking. Castiel wishes he could leave, right now; could trade this place for anywhere else on the planet. For all it might accomplish.

Crowley stretches the quiet to its utmost potential, before shattering it with a calculated smirk. “Pity they ascribe all the maturity of judgement to you that they would to a lobotomized toddler,” he says, almost casually. “What is it your simple-minded swain has taken to calling you these days? A child? That is, when he bothers to call you at all.” The smile broadens. It’s not a leer, or a glimpse of hell in a hairline crack; it’s just a line worn in flesh – softened cheek and subtle maliciousness. Paradoxically human. 

He has pushed past the brink – and he knows it. Instant hatred flares up in the hollow of Castiel’s chest. “I am _not_ ,” Castiel spits, dredging the words up from somewhere cavernous and raw within him - the existence of which he had never quite recognised before now - “a _child_.” 

Rather than countering that with something derisive, Crowley frowns at the outburst. He gives a curt sort of _hmm_ noise: _fair enough_. “Prove it, then.” A challenging lift of the eyebrows. “Throw out the toys from the attic. Slit those denim-clad dolls open from navel to throat.”

Castiel’s response is nigh instantaneous. What happens is this: scarcely waiting to jump to his feet, he seizes Crowley by the base of his throat, and shoves. After a few frenzied seconds of uncontrolled momentum, they crash into the opposite wall, sending fragments of brick splintering down to the floor. Crowley splutters; Castiel tightens his grip. “If you ever make that suggestion again, I won’t stop at that,” he spits, unfalteringly. “I will consign our ‘deal’ to dust.” He pulls, and then slams Crowley back into the wall. “I will prise open the gates of Purgatory unassisted.” Another, more vehement slam. “And then I will obliterate every atom of your being.” _Slam_. “Do you understand me?” 

Crowley groans, leaning his head back against the wall. “Y’know, this used to be funny,” he says, once he is able. “You could vent a little impotent rage; I could make quips about liking it rough; our deal becomes all the stronger for the outburst. But - considering that this is happening with stupid frequency - for the love of everything that used to be holy, would you _stop doing that_?” He’s yelling now. Spit flecks the side of his mouth. Fractionally, Castiel eases his grip on his collar.

A frustrated pause, during which both catch their breath. Castiel angles his head away, sullenly facing the pooled blood on the tiled floor. They are both wasting time. 

A heartbeat and a heated glare later, Crowley is released. Stiff with fury, Castiel walks out. 

2

The air is silent here. 

Castiel stands enveloped by a vast redwood forest, humid and still in the early evening: the unchanging personal heaven of a forty-six year old college don who choked on an overripe stilton sandwich in the summer of 1972. He allows the sharp, chalky smell of tree sap to override his senses; cleanses the memory of Crowley’s lab with the muted rush of the breeze through branches, and the answering crackle of undergrowth. The impressions slide over his mind like a sticking plaster: thin, porous and temporary. Heaven can no longer stifle Earth. He is aware of this. But it acts as a temporary reprieve. 

That, or an appropriate stage upon which to vent. 

“Why give us freedom,” Castiel slowly demands of the sky, “and then leave us so ill-equipped to handle the consequences? Are we designed to do badly? Did you expect us to fail? If so, maybe you’re the only one of us alive with a ‘sense of humour’. Is all of this – the ineffability, the constant resurrections - just fodder to a giant celestial joke?” Fists clenched; eyes stubborn; no answer.

“I sure as Christ hope to _fuck_ not, Castiel.” Balthazar, of course. Inexplicably soft-spoken, despite all the cursing.

He shifts to face him, straightening. Glances at his feet, where the sun falls in patches upon the reddish dirt. “Sorry.” Far beyond them, scattered about the trees, the birds chirp droplets of melody, almost in echo.

“Far be it from me to step in between a man and his soliloquy,” says Balthazar, and Castiel identifies it as irony, though of a somewhat fraught variety. “But we’ve risked too much strength – and, ah, more importantly, too much dignity - to revert to this. Cas, you can’t waver. Don’t go whining back to Father at the first hint of adversity.”

It isn’t the first hint. But that doesn’t invalidate his point. Castiel nudges at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “You never grasped the complexity of it all,” he accuses, struck by the sudden urge to be plain. “For you, freedom meant indulgence.”

Sunlight enfolds them like a rippling veil. Balthazar looks down too; down to where Castiel has traced two swooping lines in the forest floor – wings. “Who says that’s not what I’m fighting for?” He shrugs at Castiel’s look. “We all have our banners to wave.” 

“Motives still matter.” 

“Precisely my point!” Balthazar is agitated, unexpectedly so. He takes a few steps forward, decimating the undergrowth. “You stand for some shadow of self-determination; I stand for pleasure, and we’re both the happier for it.” He closes his eyes, once, briefly – and doesn’t look quarrelsome; simply looks soft, and sad, his features half melted into resignation. He is resigned to the fact that Castiel will not understand. “Someone has to speak for the sensualists among us. Can’t let those jumped up Neanderthals forge a monopoly on _fun_.” Snide. But beyond that, there’s purpose, if only it could be formulised or parsed. 

Castiel’s eyes narrow, uncomprehending, as Balthazar lets him ponder it. Dutifully, he puts the speech, the war, the world on pause; he is waiting for Castiel to catch up, only he isn’t frustrated. It makes Castiel squeeze his hands into fists, and want to tear things down for frustration, and hiss through his teeth that there is more at stake here than Balthazar will ever know. That there are layers here, and Castiel is buried deep – far deeper than him. 

That would be unproductive. Perhaps even unfair.

“Your help is appreciated, however disappointing the reasons,” he forces out, eventually, and hopes it will ease things a little. 

“Do put a sock in it, Cas. I’m here, aren’t I?” Balthazar pelts the words almost like projectiles, but not quite. There is something that doesn’t quite cohere to the roughness of his tone. It isn’t brusque, but broken. There’s an element of plea to it; an undercurrent of desperation. In that instant, it strikes Castiel exactly _why_ he is here. 

But he didn’t actually intend to admit to that, did he. Castiel is no fool, but neither is he a monster. And so he wilfully misunderstands. “Yes. And that counts for more than I first thought,” he says, keeping his tone as level as he can. He does not risk a glance aside. “I’m lucky your whims fell in line with my cause. This time round.” Eyes locked; all earnestness. But there are some topics that mustn’t be broached. 

Balthazar chuckles, oblivious to that earlier moment of clarity, imagining he remains as obtuse as ever. “That you are,” he agrees, with the crooked flash of a confident smile. 

And Castiel could almost cry at that, he swears he could – for all that he knows he is not really capable of it. 

3

He has already tried begging at God’s doorstep. Now, invisible and inaudible in the passenger seat of the Impala, he does the same for Dean. Dean, who is driving in stone-faced silence, gripping the wheel like a lifeline. He drove out to fetch food and supplies, with the laconic assurance of his swift return to Sam and Bobby. Now, he just drives, veering across roads at random with sudden, painful determination. Tangled roadside verdure blurs into each dilapidated bridge; off-colour lamplights streak the sky with greater and greater velocity. Perhaps it helps settle his thoughts. Regardless, it is an indulgence, given the situation – and Castiel, were he anywhere else, any _one_ else right now, would not hesitate to disapprove. But then, perhaps anyone else might empathise. 

Anyone else might also realise that this is an awful idea. 

“So. In the vast, ineffable scheme of things, the scope of which you could scarcely comprehend,” he begins, conversationally enough, “ _you_ are the baby. Compared to me, that is. I can’t say I’m an expert on human standards. But these days you crave my attention, and demand my support. It all strikes me as faintly infantile. You’re young, and _I’m_ older than Earth. Where does that leave us? It leaves you as little more than a speck on the celestial horizon. Frankly.” He realises that, contrary to his initial intentions, this diatribe is taking a turn for the petty, and summarily backtracks. “I just wanted you to realise this before I save you all. Realise that I’m not a child. Preferably, I would have liked to see you recognise it without my help, but we’re running out of time for that, and you can be exceptionally obtuse.”

Dean remains stiff and impassive as ever. Castiel doesn’t know why he expected otherwise. Perhaps there is a small, illogical corner of his being that still believes Dean can overcome anything. Can rip his way through the laws of perception; spot an invisible angel when it monologues in his vicinity. He resolves to quash it. Later. For now, he will speak.

“You used to entrance me,” he continues, easily enough. “You made freedom look so effortless. I now realise that the illusion was mostly maintained by lots of stellar advice delivered months after it might have been relevant. Angels stop at using the phrase ‘I told you so’, Dean, but you imply with every facet of your being.” An appraising pause. Peering sideways, he meets Dean’s silent eyes. “And I don’t think you understand how much of a - of a pissy little douchewagon you can be about it.” No modulation in tone. Just the usual blend of diluted regret, unalloyed frustration and misappropriated colloquialisms. 

Dean, damn him to hell – _no, don’t, he doesn’t mean it_ \- lacks the perception to register that his sense of proportion is being maligned. He is a stretch of immobile flesh, silent and staring as ever, and why Castiel ever thought otherwise is beyond him. But whether or not he can hear is irrelevant. This practically doesn’t concern him. For that matter, none of it does.

Castiel still speaks regardless. “Dean. _Dean_. Every pillar I turn to for support has – flaws. Every idol has feet of clay. Even you.” Pause for correction. “Especially you. You more than anyone else, perhaps even God. The more I consider it, the more I see that that was probably the point of the lesson after all. I was never adept at applying your lessons. Perhaps I was never adept at learning.”

_No, you had a choice. You just made the wrong one._

_Dean…_

Dean will forever reduce issues to polarity. But then, he’s always taken his will for granted; he was born to the rapid flutter of choice upon choice upon choice, and learned to thrive – learned to make _sense_ of it. Castiel entered that realm as a stranger. Truth is, he’s still one. But he knows enough to know that freedom is far more terrifying than oppression could ever be. “Every step that I take is precluded by a wealth of other possible steps. More than steps, because the possibilities are not finite, and nothing fits perfectly. There is no _right choice_. There are very few wrong choices. I’m not working according to fixed guidelines, but I’m not drawing any new ones either. Mostly I’m just – stumbling.”

True enough. Not that admitting it helps. Not even if Dean could hear.

“That’s all beside the point,” Castiel decides, eventually. Right now, he thinks he understands why Dean and Sam so rarely _do_ admit things. It doesn’t account for a speck of difference. “This is nothing new for you. The point is this. I talked to God, and there was no answer. I look to you, and you are silent. Moreover, you hate me now. So - there’s that too.” 

_Freedom_ and _Dean_ have always been too closely entangled for Castiel to distinguish them. Dean, who, having taught him the meaning of rebellion, insisted he defer to his judgement the one time it actually mattered. Severance was only inevitable as momentum, only inevitable as falling had been. But it hurts – God help him, it hurts - and he feels half blind as consequence.  
“I look to myself, and there is more than silence. There’s mostly ambivalence, which I guess could be worse, but between silence and ambivalence there isn’t much competition. I’d rather take my own, confused advice than no advice at all.

“I’m not doing this because you and God never gave me an answer. I’m doing this because I’ve found something better than your answers.” He ghosts a finger across Dean’s brow; softer than the subtlest echo of a feather - and if he notices any fractional shift in pressure, he shows no sign; remains watching the road disappear into endlessness. _I would die for you_ , Castiel promises. _But I won’t privilege your judgement_. “I found agency. I think I found – me.”

4

_What are you, Castiel?_

A wave of celestial power. A pulse of pure energy, caught up in a blanket of flesh.

“That’s not right. You are _disgustingly_ literal, you know that? You’re no more a flash of divine light than I am a lemming.”

He wishes that Crowley would stop it. 

_What are you?_

He knows what he isn’t. He is not naïve.

“And you’re about as underhanded as _Tiny fucking Tim_. This despite your newfound predilection for lying inexpertly through your teeth. Try again.” 

_What?_

General. Dissembler. A leader, unelected, unchosen. An all-round duplicitous son of a bitch.

“Ooh, I just _love_ it when you go off on a self-deprecatory binge, darling.”

This is not at all relevant. 

_What exactly are you willing to do?_

Whatever it takes. 

“Short of eviscerating your pretty-boy performing monkeys."

There have to be standards. A line in the sand.

“Oh? Where’s it drawn, then? And why?” 

He – he doesn’t. Know. But it’s there. 

“Marvellous. Y’know, great thing about all these hypothetical lines scoring the moral Sahara is that they’re just that. Hypothetical. And as such, accountable to bugger all. So you can prise your arse off the pedestal, mate. ‘Cause beneath all that surly, sanctimonious bluster - you’re just like the rest of us.”

Maybe so. 

But leaders have to come from somewhere. Here is as good a place as any.

Castiel turns to leave.


End file.
